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Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome Paperback – June 1, ​ This is the first English translation of Apicius de re Coquinaria, the oldest known cookbook in existence.​ The Roman Cookery Book: A Critical Translation of the Art of Cooking, for Use in.
Table of contents

Athenaeus tells about these gastronomers, the greatest of them, Archestratos, men who might have contributed so much to our knowledge of the ancient world, but to us these names remain silent, for the works of these men have perished with the rest of the great library at the disposal of this genial host of Alexandria. Too, there are Anacharsis and Petronius. They and Athenaeus cannot be overlooked.

These three form the bulk of our evidence. Take on the other hand Plutarch, Seneca, Tertullian, even Pliny, writers who have chiefly contributed to our defective knowledge of the ancient table. They were no gourmets. They were biased, unreliable at best, as regards culinary matters.

Their state of mind and their intolerance towards civilized dining did not improve with the advent of Christianity. There is one more man worthy of mention in our particular study, Horace, a true poet, the most objective of all writers, man-about-town, pet of society, mundane genius, gifted to look calmly into the innermost heart of his time. So much for Horatius, poet.

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Still, he was not a specialist in our line. We cannot enroll him among the gifted gourmets no matter how many meals he enjoyed at the houses of his society friends. We are rather inclined to place him among the host of writers, ancient and modern, who have treated the subject of food with a sort of sovereign contempt, or at least with indifference, because its study presented unsurmountable difficulties, and the subject, per se , was a menial one.

With this attitude of our potential chief witnesses defined, we have no occasion to further appeal to them here, and we might proceed to real business, to the sifting of the trustworthy material at hand. It is really a relief to know that we have no array of formidable authorities to be considered in our study. We have virgin field before us—i. Pompeii was destroyed in A. From its ruins we have obtained in the last half century more information about the intimate domestic and public life of the ancients than from any other single source.

What is more important, this vast wealth of information is first hand, unspoiled, undiluted, unabridged, unbiased, uncensored;—in short, untouched by meddlesome human hands. Though only a provincial town, Pompeii was a prosperous mercantile place, a representative market-place, a favorite resort for fashionable people. The town had hardly recuperated from a preliminary attack by that treacherous mountain, Vesuvius, when a second onslaught succeeded in complete destruction. Suddenly, without warning, this lumbering force majeur visited the ill-fated towns in its vicinity with merciless annihilation.

They escaped with their bare lives. Only the aged, the infirm, the prisoners and some faithful dogs were left behind. Today their bodies in plaster casts may be seen, mute witnesses to a frightful disaster. The town was covered with an airtight blanket of ashes, lava and fine pumice stone. There were no agonies to speak of. The great event was consummated within a few hours. The peace of death settled down to reign supreme after the dust had been driven away by the gentle breezes coming in from the bay of Naples. Some courageous citizens returned, searching in the hot ashes for the crashed-in roofs of their villas, to recover this or that.

Perhaps they hoped to salvage the strong box in the atrium, or a heirloom from the triclinium. But soon they gave up.

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Despairing, or hoping for better days to come, they vanished in the mist of time. Pompeii, the fair, the hospitable, the gay city, just like any individual out of luck, was and stayed forgotten. The Pompeians, their joys, sorrows, their work [6] and play, their virtues and vices—everything was arrested with one single stroke, stopped, even as a camera clicks, taking a snapshot.

To be exact, it took these generations eighteen centuries to discover and to appreciate the heritage that was theirs, buried at the foot of Vesuvius. During these long dark and dusky centuries charming goat herds had rested unctuous shocks of hair upon mysterious columns that, like young giant asparagus, stuck their magnificent heads out of the ground. Blinking drowsily at yonder villainous mountain, the summit of which is eternally crowned with a halo of thin white smoke, such as we are accustomed to see arising from the stacks of chemical factories, the confident shepherd would lazily implore his patron saint to enjoin that unreliable devilish force within lest the dolce far niente of the afternoon be disturbed, for siestas are among the most important functions in the life of that region.

Occasionally the more enterprising would arm themselves with pick-axe and shovel, made bold by whispered stories of fabulous wealth, and, defying the evil spirits protecting it, they would set out on an expedition of loot and desecration of the tomb of ancient splendor. Only about a century and a half ago the archaeological conscience awoke. Only seventy-five years ago energetic moves made possible a fruitful pilgrimage to this shrine of humanity, while today not more than two-thirds but perhaps the most important parts of the city have been opened to our astonished eyes by men who know.

And now: we may see that loaf of bread baked nineteen centuries ago, as found in the bake shop. We may inspect the ingenious bake oven where it was baked. We may see the mills that ground the flour for the bread, and, indeed find unground wheat kernels. There are the advertisements on the walls, the foods praised with all the eclat of modern advertising, the election notices, the love missives, the bank deposits, the theatre tickets, law records, bills of sale.

So slippery are the cooks that Plautus calls one Congrio —sea eel—so black that another deserves the title Anthrax —coal. There they are, one and all, the characters necessary to make up what we call civilization, chattering agitatedly in a lingo of Latin-Greek-Oscan—as if life were a continuous market day. It takes no particular scholarship, only a little imagination and human sympathy to see and to hear the ghosts of Pompeii. No heroic gesture. No theatricals, in short, no lies. There is to be found no shred of that vainglorious cloak which humans will deftly drape about their shoulders whenever they happen to be aware of the camera.

Her life stands before our eyes in clear reality, in naked, unadorned truth. Indeed, there were many things that the good folks would have loved to point to with pride. You have to search for these now. There are, alas and alack, a few things they would have hidden, had they only known what was in store for them. But all these things, good, indifferent and bad, remained in their places; and here they are, unsuspecting, real, natural, charming like Diana and her wood nymphs.

Were it not quite superfluous, we would urgently recommend the study of Pompeii to the students of life in general and to those of Antiquity in particular. Those who would know something about the ancient table cannot do without Pompeii. To those who lay stress upon documentary evidence or literary testimony, to those trusting implicitly in the honesty and reliability of writers of fiction, we would recommend Petronius Arbiter. It is, too, the work of a great writer moving in the best circles, and, therefore, so much more desirable as an expert.

Petronius deserves to be quoted in full but his work is too well-known, and our space too short. However, right here we wish to warn the student to bear in mind in perusing Petronius that this writer, in his cena , is not depicting a meal but that he is satirizing a man—that makes [8] all the difference in the world as far as we are concerned.

There is, not so well-known a beautiful picture of an Athenian dinner party which must not be overlooked, for it contains a wealth of information. Although Greek, we learn from it much of the Roman conditions. Anacharsis was not a Hellene but a Scythian visitor. By his own admission he is no authority on Grecian cookery, but as a reporter he excels.

This truly Hellenic discussion of the art of eating and living at the table of the cultured Athenians is the most profound discourse we know of, ancient or modern, on eating. The wisdom revealed in this tale is lasting, and, like Greek marble, consummate in external beauty and inner worth.

We thus possess the testimony of two contemporary writers which together with the book of Apicius and with what we learn from Athenaeus should give a fair picture of ancient eating and cookery. Unfortunately, this source has not been spared by meddlesome men, and it has not reached us in its pristine condition. As a matter of fact, Apicius has been badly mauled throughout the centuries. This book has always attracted attention, never has it met with indifference. In the middle ages it became the object of intensive study, interpretation, controversy—in short it has attracted interest that has lasted into modern times.

When, with the advent of the dark ages, it ceased to be a practical cookery book, it became a treasure cherished by the few who preserved the classical literature, and after the invention of printing it became the object of curiosity, even mystery. Some interpreters waxed enthusiastic over it, others who failed to understand it, condemned it as hopeless and worthless. The pages of our Apiciana plainly show the lasting interest in our ancient book, particularly ever since its presence became a matter of common knowledge during the first century of printing.

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The Apicius book is the most ancient of European cookery books. Platina, in , was more up-to-date. His book had a larger circulation. But its vogue stopped after a century while Apicius marched on through [9] centuries to come, tantalizing the scholars, amusing the curious gourmets if not educated cooks to the present day. Who was Apicius?

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This is the surname of several renowned gastronomers of old Rome. There are many references and anecdotes in ancient literature to men bearing this name. Two Apicii have definitely been accounted for. The older one, Marcus A. The man we are most interested in, M.


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Gabius Apicius, lived under Augustus and Tiberius, 80 B. However, both these men had a reputation for their good table. It is worth noting that the well-read Athenaeus, conversant with most authors of Antiquity makes no mention of the Apicius book. This collection of recipes, then, was not in general circulation during Athenaei time beginning of the third century of our era , that, maybe, it was kept a secret by some Roman cooks.

On the other hand it is possible that the Apicius book did not exist during the time of Athenaeus in the form handed down to us and that the monographs on various departments of cookery most of them of Greek origin, works of which indeed Athenaeus speaks were collected after the first quarter of the third century and were adorned with the name of Apicius merely because his fame as a gourmet had endured. What Athenaeus knows about Apicius one of three known famous eaters bearing that name is the following:.

Hearing, too, that they were very large in Africa, he sailed thither, without waiting a single day, and suffered exceedingly on his voyage. The instructions given in our Apicius book, Recipe 14 , for the keeping of [10] oysters would hardly guarantee their safe arrival on such a journey as described above. Athenaeus tells us further that many of the Apician recipes were famous and that many dishes were named after him. This confirms the theory that Apicius was not the author of the present book but that the book was dedicated to him by an unknown author or compiler.

Athenaeus also mentions one Apion who wrote a book on luxurious living. Whether this man is identical with the author or patron of our book is problematic.

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Torinus, in his epistola dedicatoria to the edition expresses the same doubt.